"And We Could Live Happily Ever After"

It was with great sadness that I read that Nora Ephron had passed away due to a long fight with leukemia. Nora Ehpron was not only brilliant but she understood like no modern day writer the heart of a woman.   A woman who was successful but who wanted to be loved. A woman who still believed in a fairy tale.  But knew to laugh at herself for believing it.  When you ask a single woman what she wants, what she needs; she will relate a story by Nora.  She will tell you a funny story about loving a man she had known for years,  loving a man she really didn't know at all but whom she looked for everywhere, in every man's eyes.  The stories of Nora Ehpron are the stories of modern women falling in love with their best friend, falling in love with a dream and falling in love with an idea. They are the classics we watch over and over. "When Harry Met Sally", "Sleepless in Seattle" and "You've Got Mail", "Julie and Julia".  If only her stories could be my own.  If only her stories could be true for me.  If I could but find a man who loved me to the end, who got me, and who I wanted in return then I could be the heroine of my own story.  If  I could  be loved by a  sweet man like Tom Hanks. And look like a young Meg Ryan.  And even better,  if I could write one word that made my point, or reached your heart or made you laugh or love the way she did.  That would be the best.  Then I would be a writer of a story.  A story like Nora Ephron wrote.

Date Two

This weekend I had my second Match.com date.  I had originally canceled it and planned to forget the guy.  Then he called, emailed  repeatedly and finally, I conceded.  Anyone that interested in seeing me; well, what's a girl to do?  Once again, I can say, my first instinct was the best one.  Its not that he doesn't have some good qualities, its that being attractive to me wasn't one of them.  He brought his dogs which was the highlight of the date.  At least until they jumped on my sofa, wet from the lake.  He did look over at me and say, "That's OK, isn't it?" To be honest I preferred the dogs on my sofa to him on my sofa.  I am doomed and desperate, again.  No, that's not true.  I am encouraged that I may yet meet someone that I like.  So all I can say is "Next".

Date 1 On Un-matched.com

I followed a Harley to Calhoun, Georgia, to meet my first March.com date, Jerry. The girl on the back of  the Harley, now forever called Bubba 's Bike in my head, had made a terrible fashion mistake by wearing a tube top with her low riders. Anyone behind her could have told her this.  She also had chosen a helmet with fake long, pink pigtails complete with ribbons to compliment her ensemble.  I should have turned around at the first safe intersection believing this to be a sign; but, instead I went to lunch at the Cracker Barrel with a former rocket scientist.  Anyone who ever uses that term to describe themselves or someone else doesn't understand that is not a compliment.  It may mean the person is smart, but smart is a term loosely applied when talking social graces.  When applied to a real rocket scientist who worked at Red Stone Arsenal,  its a warning to not go to lunch.  Not only can't you understand them talking, you don't want to understand them.  The intricate details of repairing a trailer hitch becomes mind boggling. You just want to go home after you eat your Chicken and Dumplings.  I can tell you almost everything about Jerry; from his tragic parents divorce at the age of 8 to what his sister likes to wear to what he had for supper last night.  He asked me if I was really divorced.  And should I sit with my back to the door instead of him. I have talked to Jerry for over an hour on the phone and never had to lick my lips.  Jerry never stops talking about himself.  When I asked him about his Match name, Atticus, he related the entire "To Kill a Mockingbird" story line.  After a complete description of the book and who played which parts in the movie, noting he thought he looked a little like Gregory Peck, "not",  I smiled and thought to myself, now is not the time to tell you my daughter is Harper Lee's cousin.  So I drove back full of dumplings and sick of Jerry.

A Real Pain in the Neck

I was heavy with my second child when over 30 years ago, I lost my balance carrying clothes down to the laundry and fell hitting the back of my head on the steps.  I could use that as an excuse for my mental problems but instead offer it as a reason for the pain in my neck. I have had muscle relaxers, pains meds, chiropractic adjustments, cortisol shots, and massages over the years to help with the stiffness and subsequent shoulder problems. I carry every disappointment, sadness and loss in that injury. It has plagued me in divorces, deaths and through financial difficulties. Lately it has prevented me from looking back to the right to see what was coming. State Farm wishes I would. I have had three fender benders since finding myself in N. Georgia.  Last week I went to have massage in a house that had I not been told was a safe place, I would have been listening for banjo music and the smell of a meth factory.  The house is on a hill (what isn't?) on the road from Jasper, Georgia, to Talking Rock.  It has a sign outside that says "Massage School" -Student Rates $25/ hr. My little therapist was a sweet girl. She was hard at work on my shoulder when the door opened and a woman came in. Gray hair in a messy bun, a face that had never known makeup, badly in need of a good mask but which had loved the sun. She had mistaken me for someone else but within a minute she had diagnosed my ailment and told me "I'll fix it, Baby Girl". My neck and shoulder were turned and popped and "my atlas shrugged".  She wasn't threatening but instead she looked almost comical to me upside down and with gravity fully engaged. Her voice was rough and heavy with a Pickens County hillbilly dialect. After adjusting and popping and moving me in directions I hadn't moved in a while, she reached up to my right ear and gave it a little tug and I felt something release in my jaw. Then in a voice that sounded more like a kindly priest than a heavy set elderly lesbian who did massage therapy, she whispered "You need to let that go, Baby Girl, whatever it is, its just not worth holding on to".   Before leaving she suggested we go to the "Old Farts Dance" in Ellijay. She said she couldn't see to drive anymore at night and she'd love to bring a girl like me.  Finally I have a date.

In the World of Er and Est

I have heard it said that only a fool compares himself to others.  Then we are all fools.  I don't know anyone who doesn't wish they were richer, skinner, sexier or smarter, or something. The problem seems to be that none of us are the richest, skinniest, sexiest or smartest.  The trouble with comparing ourselves is that there will always be someone better off in every area of our lives. This weekend I found myself caught in the spiral of comparison. I sat by the pool in my neighborhood and quickly became aware that my age, body, face, IQ and tan were are failing terribly in the "world of ER and EST". Everywhere I looked someone looked better and had more or less of something.  Brown spots, wrinkles, sags and bulges and money. Also there were a bunch who were worse off but I don't find that all that comforting any more.  I thought about the email my ex-husband had sent me recently saying he'd never felt he had made the grade.  It surprised me since to tell you the truth, I never got the feeling he was spending that much time trying to reach any great heights in his life strategy.  Now though I guess I can see that he was but that it was such a losing proposition that it seemed easier to not try.  And that a 22 year old  bimbo could make even a loser feel superior when he compared himself to her and more surprisingly, found himself to be her love object. Even for a short time. And even if it costs a lot of money. I have decided men don't mind being loved for their money.   After all, they make the money that buys the love so its really no different than a woman being loved for her looks, body or culinary skills.  And we all want to be loved for our personality, not in spite of it.  We are all buying love, one way or another.  And the more ER we are, the more likely that we will be loved for it.  So in the name of love, I am going to go to the gym more, have a little work done(details later) and buy a bottle of self tanner.  I will not be the bestEST but , Lord forgive me, I sure as heck don't want to the worEST.  And I am going back on Match.com and try to find a man who will love me for my ER and EST. Good or bad. And so I begin.....its like Round 247 or so, but who's counting.

Help, I've Fallen and I Can't Get Up

After a little over 24 hrs with my three daughters and three grandsons, my house was very empty yesterday when they all headed home. We had talked and talked and I had answered a lot of Why? questions and What's that? from the young grandson. I decided I could use some down time myself. I skipped church and began cleaning out closets. My noon I had cleaned and cleared and thrown away things I had forgotten I had.  A little after lunch, I realized I had not spoken in almost 20 hrs.  About 4 p.m. I began to think that the rapture had come and Jesus hadn't called me.  I turned on Fox News knowing that if that was the story they would be carrying it. No terrorist attack or major catastrophe had befallen the human race.  I picked up my phone. Yes, there's that familiar dial tone. My cell had bars.  By 5 p.m. I was sitting on the porch with a glass of wine thinking about how many ways I could have died during the day and not been missed. I might have carried something to the attic and broken my neck on that faulty step. Slipped cleaning out the fridge and laid on the floor in a coma. Electrical problems ended my life while changing a light blub. A rattle snake got me in the garden.  I was mauled by a bear and bleed to death. By the second glass of wine I was beginning to feel sorry for myself.   I thought about my Momma and how she'd say, "Yes, I sat here all day and no one called me".  I always ignored her and changed the subject. Now I think about her growing up with l3 brothers and sisters, 5 children and scores of grandchildren and relatives and being married to the same man for over 50 years.  I can image the silence was deafening. Ok, I didn't die and really I enjoyed my day. But as I went to bed, alone, with 2 Tylenol PM and  thought about never having heard a single voice, said a word or seen another person all day I wished I had been a better daughter. That was pretty good wasn't it. I was taught "guilt trip" by a professional, My Mother. 

For the Love of Nature

Yesterday I had my first bear sighting of the summer.  She was fat and glossy and sitting very calmly along the busiest neighborhood street.  She wasn't a very large bear and she had two fine cubs playing on an old log beside her right in front of my friend Cathy's home.  The cubs rolled over the log, tried to crawl on top and playfully chased each other as mother patiently dug for grubs and small rodents in the log.  I slowly drove by as cars in the other direction did the same.  No matter how many bear you see, it always feels amazing that such wild creatures exist within the gates of my subdivision.  When the traffic seemed to stall, without waiting for a horn to blow, I began to circle around the narrow streets heading home.  I passed the pond which now has baby duck and young wild geese swimming and grazing in the grass field nearby. I had been to the Piggly Wiggly where I had purchased two pounds of carrots that had become too soft and had been marked down to move out of the produce aisles.  The carrots were for the doe who is heavy with a fawn that should be arriving within days.  She has taken up the post vacated by my special doe who frequented the first summer I lived here.  There were days that she seemed my only friend, days that I spent crying and worrying.  Her calm beauty made me feel that somehow I would survive in this remote place.  She had a notch in her left ear and would gently take a melon slice from my hand.  I was certainly not the first to feed her.  I have always felt she lost her life in the first deer cull, which is still considered the First Great Sin Against Nature, at least to some of us here.  This little doe is small but from the size of her belly, she is getting plenty to eat and is fairing well.  We are no longer plagued by the drought that has effected North Georgia for several years and the forest are rich in undergrowth and small trees.  I sat on my porch and watched her eat the carrots and thought how much I wish I had someone to share this with.  Then I remembered I did.  So I am sharing it with you.